The Spook Hills Mystery/Chapter 14

It is not wise for a party to become separated in the wilderness. Shelton, born to the easy ways of policed streets and cars which may be counted upon to land all wanderers at home in due time, did not know of that unwritten law of the wild which commands a man to keep in touch with his companions. He went calmly about his own business, and felt no compunctions whatever over the separation.

Spider and Vida, however, knew well the law of the wild, and did their best to obey it. They waited on top of the ridge, and talked of many things. After a while they rode back where they could scan the long, bare slope they had just climbed; for Shep was green, and there was no telling what might have happened. They did not see anything of him, for the simple reason that he had crossed the ridge lower down while they stood talking, hidden from him by a straggling growth of alders. They went back to the highest point and waited there, and watched all the slopes. Spider yelled, with his cupped hands for a megaphone, to the four quarters of the earth until he was purple.

They retraced their steps to where they had last seen Shep, and from there they tried to track him. They did track him halfway up the ridge, and then lost all trace of him in a patch of thick, short grass all matted with last year's growth. They called him names, relieving their minds a little. They told each other, over and over, how blameless they had been, and how they had taken it for granted he would have sense enough to follow them and not go wandering off by himself. They went back upon the pinnacle and waited again, and watched the hills and cañons spread all about them as an eagle must watch from his aerie. They repeatedly declared that they ought to go on and leave him—it would serve him right and "learn" him a lesson. But they lingered still, held by that law of the wild that stragglers must be accounted for before a party may continue its journey. Perhaps the law itself might not have held them, had there not been a very real menace to wanderers in those hills. Somewhere this wilderness held concealed a man who would murder, fiendishly and wantonly. They could not go on and leave Shep unaccounted for. He had started out with them, and he had given them no hint that he intended to leave them. And yet he had disappeared completely and without warning.

"Aw," said Spider at last, when the sun hung high and hot over their heads, "there's no sense in waiting here any longer. He'd 'a' showed up long ago if he was coming. We've done our share, and then some. We've waited here, and hunted and watched two good, long hours—and I've hollered my head off. If that other fellow's anywhere within ten mile of us, he knows just where we're located by this time. Let's get on over the other side-a the mountain and take a look at them caves."

"But I don't see where Shep could 'a' went to!" Vida complained nervously. "I guess my nerves are all upset lately; I know it don't take much to worry the life outa me."

"Let's go back to camp." Spider had suggested it four or five times, hut he tried it again in the hope that Vida, like all other women, would change her mind. "This ain't no business for a girl, anyway—tracking down a murderer. We'll go back, and I'll get Spooky and Jim, and we'll make a still hunt all through here. I never meant to"

"Oh, I know all that. But I consider I'm just as good as Spooky or Jim, either one. I can shoot—and that's what will count if we meet him. I don't scare easy—honest, I don't. You mustn't feel as if you've got me on your hands, to take care of. I can take care of myself. I—killed a mountain lion once."

"I don't know of anybody I'd rather have along," said Spider, softening his voice unconsciously. "You've sure got most-a the men skinned for nerve. I never seen a woman as nervy as you are." He paused, and leaned a trifle closer. "'F there's anything I hate, it's a coward," he added guilefully. "All I meant was that I ain't as brave for you as you are for yourself. I d'no' what I'd do if anything was to happen to you."

Vida was not schooled to coquetry. She blushed and looked away from him, across the uneven crests of the hills. She had no pert answer ready; she was acutely conscious of his hand behind her on the high cantle, just as if he had his arm around her, she felt. And she was conscious of her own awkwardness.

"Why, there's Shep, away over there! Ain't it?" She pointed a slim brown finger. "It's a white horse, anyway—I bet he's headed for home."

Spider frowned and took away his hand. Even at two or three miles' distance Shep could be a confounded nuisance, it would seem, and interrupt just when he shouldn't. "It's him, all right," he conceded briefly. "Now you'll quit worrying about him, maybe. What shall we do? Go back, or take a look around them caves?"

"I won't go back." Vida started her pony forward, wondering why she should feel such a sudden depression. "It's awful hot. Let's hunt for a spring, and eat our lunch, first thing. We'll have to go pretty near as far as Shep went to get where there's any caves that I know anything about."

She rode part way down the ridge in silence. "I just can't make myself believe it wasn't Burney," she broke out abruptly. "A man with stilts on could make tracks—I can see how that would be easy enough, but"

"But what?" Spider looked at her unsmilingly. He had thought her convinced. She had been convinced, so far as he could see; it was like a woman to fly back on an argument and have to go through the whole deal again! "What makes it hard to believe?"

Vida turned in the saddle so that she faced him. Her eyes held a worried look; she did want to please Spider, but she was so uncompromisingly honest that she could not pretend to believe just because he wanted her to do so.

"I hate this talking and talking, and never getting anywhere," she protested impatiently. "But I just can't believe it wasn't Burney. He was big—not just tall, but big. He was so big he couldn't crawl under the wagon like a common man would, to get poppy. He waked me up, tilting the wagon up on one side, trying to crawl under between the wheels. Our brake sticks out quite a ways, but any common man coulda got under easy enough. It was Burney. I know it was. When I seen him chasing Walt Smith, he was big—big every way. We ain't after any common-sized man, and I know it. And he don't live in any cave, either. He lives right at the Sunbeam Ranch. It's all foolishness, hunting through all the caves. If he was there, we couldn't git him. He'd see us coming with our lights."

"Why didn't you say you felt that way about it?" Spider's voice was hard and even.

"A person feels things without knowing it, sometimes. I knew all the time I didn't feel right about it, but"

"If you don't want to hunt the caves, what's the use of going on?" To prove that it was of no use whatever, Spider pulled his horse to a stand. "I'll take you back to camp, and then I'll have a free hand to look where I want to look. Come on—I'll want a little time before dark."

"Oh, you needn't get mad," Vida told him quickly, her own eyes burning the anger light. "I'll go through the caves, if that's what you want. But"

"I don't want you to. I told you all along I didn't. It ain't safe for a girl." Then, just because he was a bit angry, he spoiled his last chance of sending her back. "If it was Burney, you'd be dead safe," he said. "It's because it ain't him, and I know it ain't."

"Seems to me it's poor policy to know so much about who it is and who it ain't!" snapped Vida, and sent her pony on down the hill. She did not mean anything by that, except that his positiveness irritated her at that moment.

But Spider, inflamed by his anger and made abnormally sensitive by his growing love for the girl, fancied that she was hinting at a guilty knowledge of the crime. He turned white around the lips and nostrils, and fell back a couple of rods in the rear. Save for the fact that she really was not safe in those hills alone, he would have left her, just as Shelton had left her a few days ago. He compromised by keeping her in sight, and in remaining so far behind that she must stop and wait for him openly before there could be any further speech between them.

Vida looked back once or twice very cautiously, and saw that Spider had no intention of overtaking her. She flamed hot with anger which she tried to believe was directed toward Spider rather than herself. She had been pretty mean, but so had Spider. If he really believed she wasn't safe alone, why did he lag along behind like that? Well, all right, if he wanted to keep his distance—she'd see that it was easy to do!

So she urged her pony down that hill at a shuffling trot, and when he was at the bottom she put him into a lope. She felt hateful, and she meant to act just as hateful as she felt. No Sunbeamer need think he could whistle her to his heels! He wanted to hunt through the caves? Very well, she would lead him to all the caves she knew, and he could hunt through them to his heart's content. Much good it would do him, with the murderer hanging out at the Sunbeam Ranch all the while!

Vida was a girl, and she was given to moods. Though she was accustomed to hard living and to worrying over material things—even to tragedy in a small way—she had been stirred deeply by the outrages upon her family. She could have killed, had the opportunity risen when she was in the killing mood. She had run the gamut of emotions in the past forty-eight hours, from fear and horror and hate to shy, dawning love and the sense of security which love brings to women. But nerves are tricky things at best. Because she became quite absorbed in the tormenting of one called Spider—she did not even know his real name—and she pushed into the background of her mind the real object of their quest. To lead Spider through the hills, to dodge into this cave and that cave ahead of him—always to keep ahead of him—that became a matter of importance. To make him think that he had lost sight of her permanently, and to watch from some hiding place in the rocks while he hunted for her—that raised her spirits immensely.

As to Burney—she thought of him sometimes, in the wildest places, and sent uneasy, seeking glances around her. But then she had her gun safe in its holster at her hip, and the belt sagged with loaded cartridges; and Burney was afraid of a gun. So she put the unwelcome thought of him from her, and went on teasing Spider. Nerves are tricky things, and they take strange whims. But Fate is trickier, and her whims are stranger.

Fate, for instance, sent Shelton C. Sherman straight down a cañon up which Burney was riding slowly, purposefully, saving his big horse deliberately, that he might get from him much in the way of endurance if the need came later. Shelton stopped, a good deal surprised at the meeting. Burney stopped—perhaps surprised also, though that was hard to determine just by looking at him. It was as if Burney, being given the normal amount of human emotions, had to spread them out thin to fill his great self, so that they reached the surface of his face so diluted as to be scarcely discernible. His little eyes twinkled sharply at the young man who was supposed to be somewhere else—but since they always did twinkle sharply, there was no especial meaning to be read into their expression.

There was one thing queer about Burney: he did not ask many questions, and yet he had the knack of squeezing one dry of information. He certainly squeezed Shelton dry, in the ten minutes they stood there talking. Where he had been told, truthfully and because Burney's eyes impelled the telling. What had happened at the Williams camp, and what Vida thought of it, and her father; where he and Spider and Vida had started for that morning, and why; Spider's theory of the man who wore stilts and a pair of big boots fastened on somehow to look like Burney's tracks; everything, in fact, that Shelton C. Sherman knew about the whole affair he told, just because Burney sat there on his big horse and looked down at him fixedly, with an expectant look in his little eyes, as if they were always saying, "Well, is that all?"

Shelton was not prudent, of course. He should have kept some things to himself—but he did not; not one single thing that he knew or that had been said in his presence.

"Whereabouts was they headed for when you left 'em?" Burney, having gotten the whole story, seemed to desire that certain points should be made exceptionally clear.

"For some caves that Vida knows. They wanted to find the one I was in when I saw the—tracks. The tracks of your boots," he explained, in obedience to Burney's sharp glance, "and the big bear tracks. They think maybe they'll find some clew around there. I tried to find the cave again, to show Spider, and I couldn't." Did Burney look relieved at that? "We looked all over, and we couldn't find it, or the squaw I saw, that said"

"Said what?"

"Said she knew your—father. She said"

"Did they go straight up from Williams' camp?"

"Straight as they could. I left them climbing that long ridge."

Burney glanced up at the sun. "You better go on home," he said, in his high, querulous voice. "You can work on the corral, so we can throw in some stock I want the boys to bring in to the ranch. I'm going to see Williams. I'll be back in a couple of hours. You can have dinner ready when I git there." He gave Shelton another sharp glance, seemed to hesitate, and rode past without having made up his mind.

So they separated, the one going down the cañon toward the more open country and the other going up into the heart of the roughest part.

Shelton looked back, when he had ridden a few yards; he caught Burney looking back also, and there was something furtive in his posture. Shelton faced confusedly to the front again, and rode on, but his mind was busy with the man behind him. If Burney were going to the Williams camp, what was he doing riding up this cañon? That would make the way longer as well as rougher, without giving any advantage that Shelton could determine. If he were not going to the Williams camp, why should he explain that he was going there? Burney was not in the habit of volunteering information except when it was necessary to do so; it was not necessary to account to Shelton for his riding in the hills.

A qualm of uneasiness struck Shelton. Why had Burney been so particular about wanting to know just where Vida and Spider were going?

What was that to Burney? Shelton rode a few rods farther, thinking hard. He began to wish that he had not told Burney quite so much. What if Burney

A dryness came into Shelton's throat. He turned impulsively, and rode back up the cañon as quietly as he could, and before him as he rode was a vision of the scattered carcasses of dead sheep killed mysteriously, and the twisted corpse of a man lying cold under the stars; and of Vida and Spider, riding together over the ridge, talking together, careless of what danger they might meet in the hills. He shivered, though the day was hot.